Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [192]
Those days were over but they had led to the present, and she must never allow the glory of Court power to obscure the degrading beginning. Abigail, Lady Masham, had come a long way from poverty and indignity and she was not the sort to forget it.
Samuel understood, perhaps more than she had believed he could; he was gentle and unobtrusive.
There came a time when she was restless; this was when she heard that Robert Harley, Lord Oxford was to be impeached for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanours.
Unlike Bolingbroke he had not fled the country. He had stood firm and she was glad that he had. Yet she hoped that he would not be found guilty. What had he done?
She waited for news with trepidation. Samuel knew it. He was watchful of her during that time—watchful and full of tact.
“They cannot call him a criminal for pursuing a policy of which they don’t approve,” pointed out Samuel.
“They will have other charges to bring,” answered Abigail.
And so they had. They accused him of helping the Pretender to which he replied that everything he had done had been sanctioned by the Queen.
But with the fears of rebellion and so much political activity, the Harley affair seemed unimportant. It was shelved and he was left a prisoner in the Tower for two years.
Often Abigail in her comfortable bed would think of him in his prison in the Tower. Then she became pregnant again and his image grew faint.
“You need not think,” Samuel told her, “that you could be involved in his affairs.”
“I am not afraid,” she answered.
And strangely enough she believed Samuel understood that her preoccupation with Harley’s affairs was not due to a fear of being accused with him. It was some subtle connection, some vague relationship between them which she was striving to forget.
THE END OF THE FAVOURITES
arah was making a busy life. The houses at St. Albans and Windsor as well as Marlborough House in London were always full of young people, and she was already planning grand marriages for her grandchildren. John’s health was a continual anxiety, for shortly after the first stroke he had another which was even more severe than the first, and yet Sarah nursed him through it. He found it difficult now to speak but he still clung to life. He must, Sarah told him, for what would she do without him?
He would sit in his chair and listen to the talk of his grandchildren whom he loved as devotedly as they did him. Sarah never had their affection. They were afraid of her. The only one to whom she showed real tenderness was Anne’s youngest Diana, whom she called Lady Dye. Lady Dye was her favourite and reminded Sarah frequently of her mother; moreover, the child had her mother’s temperament which made it so much easier for them to get on together. This was particularly noticeable because Lady Dye’s elder sister, Anne, had a touch of Sarah’s temper. This was certain to make for trouble and it was not possible to have such a temper duplicated in one household, so Lady Anne Spencer was sent away when her father married again.
This was another source of fury to Sarah. Only a year and a half after the death of her beloved Anne, Sunderland took another wife! He had left his Irish post and become Secretary of State which was all the more reason, Sarah believed, why he should have consulted her. She quarrelled violently with him over his marriage—to a nonentity, she declared. She could not bear it when any of the family escaped from her orbit; and she considered even son-in-laws, of whom she was not particularly fond, as part of her family.
In addition to these family troubles, she was involved in a series of quarrels with Sir John Vanbrugh over the building of Blenheim. She was a fury, said Vanbrugh, and